Hi, I’m Jennifer Borland. As the president of the Indiana Evaluation Association (IEA) I’m excited to kick off a week of posts from our members. We know Indiana is likely on the minds of AEA365 blog readers since many will be coming to our state for the AEA Evaluation Conference this year. And while the conference is sure to be amazing, I’m eager to let readers about the great work that IEA does year-round to offer evaluation-related information and resources to members–both in and outside of Indiana.

G’day, I’m Gerard Atkinson, a Director at ARTD Consultants, an Australian evaluation consulting firm. Most of my team work and live on the unceded lands of the peoples of the Eora Nation (Sydney), but I live and work on the unceded lands of the Eastern Maar peoples in Warrnambool. I acknowledge their unbroken connection to country and culture and pay my respects to elders past and present. I’m here to talk about rubrics and how you can use them to create clear and accountable evaluations.

Hi, I’m Burt Perrin and I’d like you to think about how people really react to evidence. In particular, I will highlight the backfire effect that refers to the reality that when facts are presented that show that one’s cherished beliefs are wrong, instead of people changing these (incorrect) beliefs, they become even stronger. This has profound implications for evaluation, with the predominant view still that the role of evaluation is to produce evidence.

Hello! I am Luba Falk Feigenberg, Founder and Principal Consultant of Reframe Evaluation where I support mission-driven leaders use evaluation to tell the story of their impact and to build sustainable and equitable practices.

Vulnerability is a feeling of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure that arises when we allow ourselves to be seen, heard, and deeply known, according to psychologist Brene Brown.

In this sense, vulnerability is an essential part of evaluation. Evaluation is a collaborative process that requires openness, authenticity, and the willingness to delve into uncomfortable spaces.

I’ve found 5 key aspects of vulnerability to be helpful to consider:

Hi, we are Maya Lefkowich and Michaela Raab, and we are evaluators with 30 combined years of evaluation experience. Maya is an arts-based methodologist and evaluator based in Vancouver (Canada) passionate about equity-driven and joy-centred evaluation. Michaela, working from Berlin (Germany), is a senior evaluator and facilitator in international cooperation who enjoys making sense of complex projects around the world. We met online and immediately connected on the question: how can evaluators make the most of interviews?

We’re Kelly Robertson and Lori Wingate. We work at The Evaluation Center at Western Michigan University. We are part of EvaluATE, the evaluation hub for the National Science Foundation’s Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program. To help EvaluATE focus its capacity development work, we created a list of essential ATE tasks. We’re using this list to guide development of a comprehensive set of resources to support evaluation in the ATE program.

Hi there! My name is Masha Keller, and I am a mixed-methods researcher and evaluator. I work on issues such as child abuse prevention, criminal justice, and public health.

Greetings! We are Gabby Huff, Anna Poole, Lauren Kennedy, and Rebecca Long. We are candidates in American University’s Measurement and Evaluation M.S. program. Recently, we presented research posters at the virtual DC Consortium Student Conference on Evaluation & Policy (DCSCEP). As first-time presenters at a professional evaluation conference, we wanted to share the following tips and resources for preparing and presenting posters.